


What We Talk About When We Talk About War

by thecynicaltypewriter



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Brainwashing, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2018-03-19 02:45:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3593454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecynicaltypewriter/pseuds/thecynicaltypewriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the death of his best friend, James Buchanan Barnes has to deal with the aftershocks Captain America had on him personally, and as a soldier in a post-Cap World War II.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first attempt at serious fanfiction writing and I would really appreciate it if some of you took the time to read it. I hope to take this really far as more of a character-driven story than anything else.

 

James Buchanan Barnes watched as his best friend’s face faded into the opaqueness of the snow below. At first he saw tears on Steve’s face, then it was just a blank man wearing a fucking American flag.

  
The last he saw of the man he only now realized he loved was the flag they had wrapped him in to get other people to fight. The flag he had made his own. The flag Bucky hated with the same heart that loved the man who wore it.

  
His knuckles were white on the metal of the train. His fingers felt as if they were about to fall off and chase Steve into the oblivion he was bound for. His arm went cold, dark spots clouded his vision, there was an ache in his shoulder. There were gunshots. He smelled death as he fell forward into the snow that had swallowed up his heart.


	2. Chapter 2

 

“Mr. Barnes,” Bucky heard a voice calling out. He felt white light hitting his closed eyes. The world was too bright for him.

  
He tried moving his arm up to signal his awakening. It felt light; strange. Curiosity opened his eyes for him. Bucky looked at his left shoulder to find blood welling up on bandages there. The whiteness of the room was blinding.

  
His eyes were closed again before he could open his lips. With a light head, Bucky decided to do what he always did when the world was too much. He thought of the hot summer days spent with Steve Rogers and his mother. Then a ice pick went through his neck.

  
Steve is dead, whispered the voice of self-hatred within Bucky. Tears welled up in his closed eyes. He didn’t remember the summers now, now he was remembering the childhood equivalent of an abrupt winter at war.

***

“No, p- please,” a young Steve Rogers was lying on the cold floor, looking up at world class asshole Frank Simpson. Bucky Barnes looked over his Commander Nuke’em comic at the scene. Despite the tremor in his voice, the boy did not look down, staring straight into Simpson’s eyes.  
“Anything wrong there James?” asked the Professor looking completely away from Simpson and his goons. He must’ve noticed the wrinkles on the paper from James’s fists. As good as the “turnout” for this school was, if you were rich enough and “pure” enough and went to church enough, you could get away with the bullshit Frank pulled every goddamned day. “No, Professor,” he pulled on the realest smile he could.

  
In the end, he looked away just like everyone else, and it made him sick. Even if he didn’t become one of Simpson’s goons, he would become a hypocrite like the Professor.

  
***

  
“Hey, Steve, right?” James Barnes trembled as he walked toward the scrawny young boy. Barnes wasn’t the picture of physicality either, but his kind of skinny was laziness, Steve’s was malnutrition pure and simple. It made him nervous, scared, but there was strength within this boy, if not in body then in spirit. “Yeah,” the boy answered in a steadier voice than his taller darker haired counterpart.

  
Then Frank Simpson rushed in between the two, running towards the new car awaiting him. His minions staring dumbfounded as his rich father drove him away.

  
They both looked at their shoes, both ashamed of their roles in the proceedings that had gone on earlier that day. Noticing a small black notebook lying on the floor, James bent down to pick it up. The boys’ hands met on the way to the cover. “Oh, it’s mine,” Steve said, “I draw when I’m bored ya know.” James thought about his comic books.

  
There was half a smile on the James’ face when Steve’s name was called out by the Professor. “Your nanny said she won’t be able to pick you up at the time” a confused face went through Steve’s face then one of sad recognition. James didn’t want to ask, he felt a sore spot in the boy’s spirit.

  
“Hey, I walk anyways, you can come with me” it was getting late, and James’ mom would be worried, so she might as well stay worried for another half hour while he walked Steve home.  
They were deep in Brooklyn when the blond boy blurted out “I don’t actually have a nanny you know?” That’s good, I guess, James had been thinking about how nice Steve seemed for a rich kid, it made a little more sense now, but there were still questions.

  
“My mom must’ve called, she’s been trying to get a job these last few weeks, my dad left us two months ago, and my aunt threw us out” the words came out of Steve’s mouth, leaving him breathless as they approached the apartment building where he lived. James’ face lit up, before going down with his regrets for the boy.

  
“I’m so-,” the taller boy was interrupted by Steve’s voice “You don’t have to, not unless you mean it,” the boy paused. “People have been telling me ‘I’m sorry’ for two months, and not a single one of them except for Mom has meant it.”

  
“You have my sincerest apologies,” said James without thinking, his words dripping with sarcasm. He immediately regretted it, but Steve just smiled. He did a little bow before replying with “Your apologies are most graciously accepted.”

  
James looked at Steve’s fingers as they rummaged through the black notebook, which seemed more expensive than the clothes he wore. He ripped off a page, which for some reason seemed to set the world off balance for James. Before he knew it, the page was in his hand and Steve was running up the stairs to his apartment.

  
Looking down at the page, James saw himself reading the comic he had been reading earlier, this time though he was happy.

  
***

  
James’ fist connected with Steve’s face, the smaller boy’s suppressed grunt sounding through the alley between their apartment buildings. James had grown in the days since Steve had become his friend. He wished he could tell himself that this was due to his protection of the skinny kid, but that would be a lie.

  
James was only there for the aftermath, sitting by the broken young boy as he breathed heavily and tried not to cry. It wasn’t long before Steve was asking for more than just moral support, but what he did ask for surprised his friend.

  
“Buck, punch me,” Steve was walking alongside James when he asked. “Ste-,” James was interrupted by Steve’s broken voice.

  
“Buck, it’s been five months since we’ve met now, I thought Simpson would stop now that I had someone to hang out with,” he continued more steadily “but he hasn’t and I need to learn to take his punches.”

  
“Steve, how’s this gonna help you?” “Because I trust you, Buck, I trust you to teach me to fight it.” “Taking punches isn’t fighting.”

  
The conversation had become clipped, robbed of the emotion Steve had began with, it unsettled James, he went quiet. “Then teach me to fight.”

  
With that, they began fighting every day before going into their respective homes. It hurt both of them, Steve’s pain. James feigned hurt at the punches Steve occasionally got in. They were going at it for months before Sarah Rogers found out.

  
At that point James was welcome into Steve’s small home. It may have been tiny, but Steve loved it, and that made James love it as well.

  
Steve was out getting marshmallows to see if s’mores could be made on the stove while James played with the cutout action figures he had borrowed, when Sarah Rogers walked into the room. “Ja-, I mean Bucky,” said the woman, her hair was peppered with white, yet she still seemed like the strongest person he knew. James thought that she would tell him Steve had started making the s’mores, excitement rushing up in his chest.

  
Then, a streak of sadness appeared in her face and James knew what was coming. “I saw you with Steve, the other day in the alley, and I-,” tears were in her eyes as she continued to speak “I know he wants to be strong but that’s not the wa-,” she was cut off by the opening of a door into the living room. James didn’t know how she would’ve said what she was trying to, but he understood the message and gave her a reassuring nod.

  
The next time they went into the alley. James gave Steve a hug instead of a right hook, pressing his cheek into the bony boy’s shoulder a single tear welling up. “Not today Steve, please not today.” Steve was breathing profusely now, a mixture of laughter and crying that could only come from Steve. Steve’s slender artist’s fingers knotted together on James’ back. “Never again, Buck.”

  
They sat in silence until dark. Sitting across from each other, and staring at walls. “Buck, my daddy’s dead, he died in the war.”  
James stayed quiet. It was from Steve that he had learned that solemn silence was better than empty apologies. They cried together that night.  
Eight years later, James Buchanan Barnes was wishing they could’ve died together.


End file.
